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onsdag 31 juli 2013

Big heads-up today! Chain of Command is available for pre-order here. Wohooo!!!

Bullets, nazis, sinister grey. What more do you want on a cover?

For those of you who have just tuned in, Chain of Command is the next -- highly anticipated -- game from the wargames powerhouse TooFatLardies, Purveyors of well-crafted rules which let "you play the period and not the rules" as their slogan says. The acronym CoC has gotten the lardie mailing list in a frenzy, both from a lot of bad penis jokes ("playing with CoC" etc.) as well as from excitement over the rules themselves.

So do we really need another World War 2 ruleset? I believe so yes. Chain of Command will let the players command a platoon of infantry, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less, and duke it out using actual period tactics. A game consists of a highly innovative pre-game Patrol phase, where the players try to lock eachother's scout teams down to determine or deny deployment points, followed by a number of turns of combat. Each turn consists of a random number of phases in which players alternate deploying or activating their forces, following the Chain of Command.

A lot of emphasis has been put on getting the feel of infantry tactics right. You will have to think about your plan of attack, how to use the terrain to your advantage to achieve local superiority, and how to utilise your leaders in the best way. Weapon ranges are not truncated, so if you see something you can kill it. Likewise a lot of thought has gone into the victory conditions. Each force has a moral level which drops as units and leaders become casualties, but also when the enemy captures ground.

This is very much an infantry game, where tanks and support weapons are like supporting actors in a movie; your infantry platoon is the star. Tanks may be powerful, but they are lumbering behemoths that are nearly blind without help from the infantry. Support weapons have their assigned targets and won't waste ammo on a paltry couple of grunts unless they have a lieutenant screaming in their ears to do so. No more scouting with empty trucks, sniping forward observers with an anti-tank gun or grabbing last-turn objectives with your anti-aircraft tank.

Dice, dice, baby!

To celebrate the launch, TFL has made a lot of nice add-ons for the game. Stuff that aren't essential because you can knock something up yourself that will do the job, but that will make your games look extra nice. First, there's dice. No you don't need special CoC dice. You will need to keep track of your CoC tally, and when it reaches 6 you get a CoC point to spend on something special, like an interrupt or ending a turn. Using a D6 is a very handy way of doing that, and using a special D6 with the CoC logo on makes it easier to tell it apart from any old ordinary D6 laying around on your gaming table. I think we have all at some time rolled a dice that were placed next to a unit as a reminder of something...

Tokens! Not just a token marker, but genuine tokens!

In Chain of Command you will need to keep track of units' statuses, if they are moving in a tactical stance, are placed on overwatch by a leader, or just plain have been hit. You can use whatever markers you want, but special tokens are always better, avoiding confusion. I remember playing a game many years ago where my opponent placed dice next to units on overwatch, these were the same dice he used for rolling with and there were dice lying around everywhere, making it impossible to know which were used as markers. (Yes Anders, I'm looking at you!)

Jump-off point markers. The bits in the foreground, the rest is a Sherman and a German. (Ooh it rhymes!)

Lastly we have a set of Jump-off Point markers. Jump-off Points are places on the boards you can use to deploy your units from. They represent spots in the terrain where the scouting teams have marked out a safe approach; here your leader knows he can send his men without them being attacked. Outside those points there might be crawling with enemies. Since these are more or less permanent on the board (well, they can be captured and sometimes moved) they need to look good. So TFL has commissioned top sculptor Richard Ansell to make a set of resin 28mm markers. And yes, you can make your own, but as I'm completely useless when it comes to sculpting I gladly pay for such fine items.

The rules will be released on the 21st of August, and can be pre-ordered now. Until the release date you can get some very nice bundles with the dice and markers shown above, or just the rules if you prefer to make your own. There's also a bundle with the dice and tokens, but not the Jump-Off points in case you don't play 28mm. All the pre-order bundles includes the rules in hardcopy as well as on PDF for free, which will be emailed to you at the release date. If you only want the PDF version of Chain of Command you will have to wait until the general release and order it separately then. As for the extras they will be available only as long as stocks last, so hurry up and pre-order!

fredag 26 juli 2013

In a bout of nostalgia and inspired by my mate Jocke's blog posts about his Normandie trip, I decided to kick off my summer holiday by building the old Matchbox Churchill AVRE in 1:76 scale. This is of course the re-released version by Revell. It comes with a folding girder bridge but I decided to build it without the bridge, as I don't think I will be playing many bridge-laying scenarios.

British steel in form of the Churchill AVRE close support tank.

AVRE stands for "Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers" and was a collective name for a number of variants used by engineers for various purposes. This version carries a 290mm petard mortar for demolishing bunkers and strongholds. Just what I need for Chain of Command. (But of course I can use it in IABSM too or any other WW2 game.)

fredag 12 juli 2013

I haven't updated in a little while since I have been busy. I do have lots of material for further blog posts, including terrain from Renedra, Dwarves and Chaos Warriors from Avatars of War to review. The reason I haven't written anything is partly because I have been doing some house painting in 1:1 scale, but mostly because I have been proof-reading the final draft of Chain of Command. That's right, it's nearing completion -- or rather, it is finished but the problem is to translate the rules from Rich-speak into something resembling English. Anyhow, the project is steaming along with the 21st of August as the planned release date. Read more after the break.